Another thing linoleic acid does when there's oxygen around is polymerize into a varnish, which is why linseed oil (lin-oleic) is traditionally used to waterproof cricket bats.
It used to say 'do not eat' in quite large letters on the cricket-bat-varnish bottles. Presumably now it says 'heart-healthy!'.
I wouldn't just write off the naive anti-seed oil position either from a chemical point of view. Metabolism is absurdly complicated and finely tuned. Substituting a slightly different substrate into a poorly understood set of reactions and feedback loops is unlikely to go well.
There was very little linoleic acid in the diet we evolved to eat. Sure, it's essential in small quantities, but using it as a major energy source is likely a very bad idea a priori.
I don't buy this, the curvedness of the sea is obvious to sailors, e.g. you see the tops of islands long before you see the beach, and indeed to anyone who has ever swum across a bay! Inland peoples might be able to believe the world is flat, but not anyone with boats.
A Great Man and an inspiration to me and to this community and to all thinking men.
God rest his soul in peace in Paradise.
alt-text is supposed to be: "I'm not even sure they've read Superintelligence"
Forgive me, I have strongly downvoted this dispassionate, interesting, well-written review of what sounds like a good book on an important subject because I want to keep politics out of Less Wrong.
This is the most hot-button of topics, and politics is the mind-killer. We have more important things to think about and I do not want to see any of our political capital used in this cause on either side.
typo-wise you have a few uses of it's (it is) where it should be its (possessive), and "When they Egyptians" should probably read "When the Egyptians".
I did enjoy your review. Thank you for writing it. Would you delete it and put it elsewhere?
Nicely done! I only come here for the humour these days.
Well, this is nice to see! Perhaps a little late, but still good news...
caches out
cashes out?
I knew that those wise and good benefactors of humanity would turn out to have been warning us of the dangers of polyunsaturated fats all along.
They might want to mention it to people like my father, who, on the advice of his doctor, has been pretty much only eating polyunsaturated fats these last twenty years, for the good of his heart.
Or perhaps to McDonalds, who on the basis of a consumer-led campaign changed their famously good beef-dripping fried chips to vegetable-oil fried chips, coincidentally at about the time obesity and various other nasty diseases with no known cause really became fashionable in America.